No Country for Women - Humanism, Secularism, Feminism

Taslima Nasreen

Taslima Nasreen, an award-winning writer, physician, secular humanist and human rights activist, is known for her powerful writings on women oppression and unflinching criticism of religion, despite forced exile and multiple fatwas calling for her death. In India, Bangladesh and abroad, Nasreen’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry and memoir have topped the best-seller’s list.

Taslima Nasreen was born in Bangladesh. She started writing when she was 13. Her writings won the hearts of people across the border and she landed with the prestigious literary award Ananda from India in 1992. Taslima won The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament in 1994. She received the Kurt Tucholsky Award from Swedish PEN, the Simone de Beauvoir Award and Human Rights Award from Government of France, Le Prix de l' Edit de Nantes from the city of Nantes, France, Academy prize from the Royal Academy of arts, science and literature from Belgium. She is a Humanist Laureate in The International Academy for Humanism,USA. She won Distinguished Humanist Award from International Humanist and Ethical Union, Free-thought Heroine award from Freedom From Religion foundation, USA., IBKA award, Germany,and Feminist Press Award, USA . She got the UNESCO Madanjeet Singh prize for Promotion of the Tolerance and Non-violence in 2005. She received the Medal of honor of Lyon. She got honorary citizenship from Paris, Nantes, Lyon, Metz, Thionville, Esch etc. Taslima was awarded the Condorcet-Aron Prize at the “Parliament of the French Community of Belgium” in Brussels and Ananda literary award again in 2000.

Bestowed with honorary doctorates from Gent University and UCL in Belgium, and American University of Paris and Paris Diderot University in France, she has addressed gatherings in major venues of the world like the European Parliament, National Assembly of France, Universities of Sorbonne, Oxford, Harvard, Yale, etc. She got fellowships as a research scholar at Harvard and New York Universities. She was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in the USA in 2009.

Taslima has written 40 books in Bengali, which includes poetry, essays, novels and autobiography series. Her works have been translated in thirty different languages. Some of her books are banned in Bangladesh. Because of her thoughts and ideas she has been banned, blacklisted and banished from Bengal, both from Bangladesh and West Bengal part of India. She has been prevented by the authorities from returning to her country since 1994, and to West Bengal since 2007.

Poland has a law that says that all animals must be stunned before they are culled and the procedure must be performed at a slaughter house.

Now, Poland’s Muslim community decided to refrain from the ancient tradition of animal sacrifice for the Eid al-Adha holiday amid protests by animal rights activists and a ban on halal slaughter.

Nobody is allowed to cut the throats of conscious animals in Poland. Muslims and Jewish should buy slaughter-house-meat as much as they want.

Slaughtering conscious animals should be illegal in every country in the world, not only in Poland. And no one or no community should have the right to practice slaughtering animals using illegall methods only because they have the right to practice their religion. Many religions allows slavery, child marriage, polygamy, rape in marriage, amputation for theft/robbery, killing infidels but no sane country would allow anyone to practice those in the name of religion. Why should slaughtering conscious animals be allowed?

Comments

Whenever my muslim friends and acquaintances claim that halal slaughter is “more humane” (seriously, I hear that a lot), I just link to youtube videos showing the difference. Dutch slaughterhouses use a pneumatic hammer to instantly kill the animal by driving a long pin through its skill, which is then slaughtered. Halal butchering involves a bull, or any other kind of animal, being in agony for minutes, held down in a clamp, still breathing while it slowly bleeds to death.

I can’t for the life of me imagine how anyone could consider that more humane.

The problem with Eid al-Adha is that it encourages a bunch of amateurs to practice mass slaughter as a spectator sport once a year. These amateurs are a far cry from their ancestors who slaughtered animals regularly for food.

Properly done, with the right size knife, a properly sharpened knife, an experienced butcher, and a good environment … the cow, pig, sheep or goat drops unconscious from lack of cerebral blood flow and bleeds out quickly. They drop as fast or faster than animals killed by other methods, like the bolt-guns, with almost no thrashing or struggling.

All religions follow very old rules. Eating or not eating meat is a personal choice. Humane treatment of animals (= no factory farming) is needed. Greed and enjoying cruelty (for power, money, fame/glory etc,) are all bad.

As a person who once almost bled to death I can tell you that bleeding to death from a opened artery isn’t painful or, necessarily, traumatic. The only real trauma in that situation for the cow has to do with being roped, restrained, and held down. That and all those people jumping around.

Compare that to the traditional extraction of blood for drinking by African tribesmen. It might have been Kenyans. The recording is freely available on You-tube. The The animal is clearly concerned at being held and the sting of the arrow puncturing a vein but it clearly isn’t traumatized.

I saw the machete swing by and looked down to see my leg covered in blood. There was no pain, just a curiosity at the ‘wet feeling’ and mild surprise at seeing a lot of blood when there was, just seconds before, none. Other than quickly figuring out that I was loosing a whole lot of blood fast, and realizing I would likely die if I didn’t staunch the flow of blood there really wasn’t any trauma. I just started losing power, as if my batteries were running down, it became hard to stay awake and keep moving. After a minute I couldn’t concentrate. I lost consciousness with a warm feeling. Like after a few glasses of deep red wine.

Fortunately, in the minute or so I could still focus I was able to create and tighten down a tourniquet using my own clothing and a friend, happily a trained EMT, knew enough to complete tightening down the tourniquet and keep it in place despite others wanting to loosen it so I wouldn’t ‘lose my leg’.

After a few units of blood and stitching up the artery and skin I was doing okay. I was back home in a couple of hours. I still carry a scar that, considering that it almost killed me, is shockingly small. The human body is both very tough and fragile. A little slit in the wrong spot and you go to sleep and never wake.

IMO dying isn’t cruel. It is as natural as being born. Bleeding to death isn’t painful or traumatic in and of itself. Done decisively and effectively, preferably with one swift blow laying open major arteries so you loose blood pressure and consciousness in seconds, it is one of the least traumatic ways of dying.

As with headsmen in years past a lot of the trauma and pain inflicted is a result of furtive, usually inexperienced, executioners who botch the job. Reading of a traditional slaughter of sheep and goats, with throat slit in one quick motion, and relating my own experience to it, I figure it isn’t really a bad way to go.

Try not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. For thousands of years, kosher slaughtering was clearly vastly more humane than non-kosher “western”/”european” slaughtering. It’s only in the last 100 years that there has been any debate.

Instead of letting your emotions run away with your logic once again, why not do some research.

Ritual slaughter is slaughter done according to the religious requirements of either the Jewish or Muslim religious faith. The animal is slaughtered, without being stunned, with a razor sharp knife. When the cut is done correctly, the animal appears not to feel it. From an animal welfare standpoint, the major concern during ritual slaughter are the stressful and cruel methods of restraint (holding) that are used in some plants. Progressive slaughter plants use devices to hold the animal in a comfortable, upright position. Unfortunately, there are some plants which use cruel methods of restraint such as hanging live animals upside down. At Grandin Livestock Systems, we believe that the practice of hanging live cattle and calves upside down should be eliminated. For both humane and safety reasons, plants which conduct ritual slaughter should install modern upright restraining equipment. There are many different types of humane restraint devices available….”

I really hope that everyone who commits murder of animals themselves or impassively gets cancer and dies. That or chokes to death when eating the meat! Killing without consent is murderer plain and simple!!

No doubt this is nomadic culture raised from ancient believe of satisfying unknown deity though the sacrifice of living animal. Ancient india is the prime example while in Vedic age and Gautama Buddha fought against this more than 2500years before.But now modern society still adorably accepting with their all enlightenment accomplishing right of living of every creature in the planet. This is not only a moral phenomenon but also the mandatory issue for the environment to keep going the prevailing civilization.Asa matter of fact, environment scientists cautioned long before that to keep going human civilization is must keep alive all creature .So , for the sake of our own existence we should liberate us from this nomadic culture.